


Walk Tall, an Aside

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars Saucy Sides [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Non-Explicit, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:13:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23638108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: An imagining of what might have happened between Echo and Rex during 'For a Man should Walk Tall'.Mature.  Will probably not make sense without context.
Relationships: CT-21-0408 | Echo/CT-7567 | Rex
Series: Soft Wars Saucy Sides [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1701715
Comments: 36
Kudos: 162





	Walk Tall, an Aside

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [For a Man should Walk Tall](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23628721) by [Project0506](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506). 



> Bet y'all didn't know you needed some [Echo/Rex art](https://dragneel-twins.tumblr.com/post/616059574178496512/a-piece-of-fanart-for-the-fanfic-walk-tall-an) from the amazing [Echo of @dragneel-twins](https://dragneel-twins.tumblr.com/) did you?

It feels like static on the tips of Echo’s fingers. The Captain’s skin is hot, almost searing, and every brush of Echo’s fingers against his neck and shoulder leaves them tingling with a charge. Echo feels the Captain’s eyes on him. It’s a weight he’s never gotten used to and a thrill he can’t suppress.

He’s looking at Echo. He _sees_ _Echo_. Echo’s breaths come in pants. His fingers stumble on the clasps to the Captain’s shoulder guard. It comes loose, tumbles down between their bodies, and Echo scrabbles for the new one he’s painted himself.

He’d written things, private things, on the underside before he painted. He wants the Captain to wear his words. He can’t bear for the Captain to know what those words are.

Echo is primed, he’s so painfully primed. He’s more primed than he thought was possible with how much he’s had to drink. His codpiece presses down on him like a vice. He swallows the next breath that threatens a sob.

The new guard suits the Captain. It doesn’t match his shell: leatheris too new, paint too fresh. No scratches. It stands out. It’s something a shiny ARC would wear.It’s something a shiny ARC picked out, modified. Echo is marking his Captain in a way no one can ignore.

The Captain tips his head, holds out the shoulder guard that Echo has peeled from his shell. Gestures to the ground. Echo can’t stop the noise in his breath when he sinks to his knees.

His pulse pounds a staccato in his ears. It thrums in Echo’s left temple, where the Captain has pressed him to rest it against the inside of his knee. One of Echo’s hands curls around the Captain’s ankle. He doesn’t shake him off.

If the Captain’s neck was hot, his hands are brands. Every touch ignites Echo, every clack of a clasp opening an interlude between touches. Connections front and back of the pauldrons. Smoothed down over the shoulder. Connections at the neck guard.

Echo’s breaths are rough and quick, but quiet. There are brothers around; Fives to the side, officers behind Echo. They’re all looking away, giving them that circle of privacy, but they can _hear_ all the same.

Can they hear Echo falling apart?

The Captain’s hand, Echo is intimately familiar with it. It has bruised him, but only ever to make him stronger. Knocked him down again and again but always, always picking him up after. For every impact it’s followed up with gentleness, a reassurance that the Captain might bruise him but never harm. Echo is as familiar with that hand as he is the Captain’s scent, the feel of his body against Echo's when they’ve sparred.

That hand holds firm, long fingers pressed to the back of Echo’s neck, thumb pressing at Echo’s pulse just enough to hold every ounce of Echo’s attention. The Captain’s eyes, when Echo looks up, are dark. Knowing.

Echo comes.

It’s silent, it’s sudden, Echo has spent his entire life sleeping in a room with as few as four and as many as fifteen brothers. It _hurts_ because the codpiece was never meant to allow such. It goes on forever, because the Captain holds his neck with one hand and strokes knuckles of the other down his throat.

“Good, Echo,” the Captain says in a breath Echo can barely hear. “You always do so well.”

Echo. Echo doesn’t know what he wants. He wants to rut against him, he wants to make this into a humiliation that _brands_ him so he can never forget. He wants to reciprocate. He wants to come again; he’s _still primed_.

He wants to kiss the Captain. Echo is brave enough to all but demand a piece of the him to wear himself, but he’s not brave enough for that.

His hips jerk once, twice, before he exerts ruthless control. His legs take a moment longer to stop trembling. Echo wants more. He breathes the way the Captain has taught him to calm himself: forcibly steadying his breaths until they steady themselves.

The Captain’s knuckles curve up to press pressure over Echo’s left cheekbone. “With me, trooper?”

“Sir,” Echo laughs, quietly. “Always sir.”

“I’ll have a minute with your brother. Then I want you both to go to your bunk and take care of yourselves. Do not rush it. Understood?”

“Wait for Fives, share bunk. Take our time. Yes sir.”

“Good.” Those careful fingers drag through Echo’s hair just under the curve of his skull as they pull away.

Echo stands, shakily but without help, on his own two feet as an ARC. His right shoulder holds the weight of legacy.

He steps back.

Fives bounds forward.


End file.
